Saturday college football Game of the week(and some other crap)

There aren’t many weekends that I am not super excited for the weekend of college football but this happens to be one of them. Not because there aren’t going to be some great games, because once again the lineup of NCAA football is going to be spectacular. The reason I’m not as excited is because the last week or so, the whiners have been beating me down via email, Twitter, Facebook, and text message about how awful the NCAA is because they don’t pay athletes.

And if there weren’t enough, this weekend the first BCS poll comes out (which I support) and so many of those same whiners will find a way to squeeze in plenty of complaints about that as well. Sometimes people just want to find something to complain about.

But none of this can change the great football games we are going to get to see this weekend. And even though there are some great games, the premier matchup of the weekend for me is going to be the Arkansas Razorbacks traveling to Auburn to take on the Tigers. Arkansas comes into the game ranked 12th with their only loss a 4 point loss to the Alabama Crimson Tide. Auburn on the other hand is undefeated but if you’ve seen them play you know they have looked rather underwhelming in their wins.

Game of the week

This game wins for me, because it highlights two of the most exciting quarterbacks in the country in Arkansas’s Ryan Mallett and Auburn’s Cam Newton. Mallett is a known commodity in college football and we’ve been able to get to know a lot about his over the past two seasons. He’s huge with an arm to match and is throwing for over 350 yards a game in a traditional passing offense. But he has some questionable decisions at times but has really worked hard to improve his accuracy.

On the other side you have first year starter Cam Newton. Newton comes to Auburn via Blinn Community College. I had a change to be on the sidelines of Newton’s final game for Blinn, and you could see then whichever school got him, they would have a special player. Wonder if Florida wishes they had him back right now? While Newton isn’t as prolific through the air as Mallett he is his team’s leading rusher from the QB position and you can see week after week his team is counting on him more and more to win.

I think that from a talent perspective, the Razorbacks have more of it all over the field. But Coach Petrino has to get these guys to commit fewer penalties and get them to cut down on costly turnovers or they will lose this game. Auburn on the other hand has to hope that the Razorback defense that has played so well this year will have an answer for Newton. Playing in Auburn is tough and even though I think Arkansas is better and I’ll be rooting for them, I think that Auburn pulls off a tight victory.

Trojans and Bears provide great entertainment among non-ranked teams as Cal gets the upset on the road.

Stunner in Cheese Country as Ohio State goes to Wisconsin and loses in hangover game. Pryor’s Heisman campaign stopped dead in its tracks.

Les Miles and the LSU tigers win a game without any hijinks as they cruise over McNeese State. College fans everywhere are sad.

Gators put the breaks on their losing skid at home against improving Mississippi State team.

Boise State cruises as their community college schedule continues in California as they beat San Jose State easily. The Spartans keep cashing checks to be punching bag for big programs.

Snap Judgment of early games.

I hate what is happening in Lawrence for KU Jayhawk fans. I was against the Turner Gil hiring from the beginning, but this is bigger than one bad coach. The players just aren’t playing hard. I realize that Gil has promised to recruit Texas hard so we’ll see. Right now Rivals.com doesn’t have them among the top 50 recruiting classes in the country, and of their 2011 commits, they have 12 3 Star players and nothing else of interest. Following high school football like I do, I see a couple of names on their like dual threat QB Michael Cummings and RB Dreamius Smith so I won’t say the future doesn’t look better for the Jayhawks. But I have a very hard time believing that former head Coach Mark “Big Sammich” Mangino left the cupboards this bear. And that’s coaching.